Global Marketeers Club (2025)

01/07/2025

An AI Ran a Vending Machine for a Month and
Proved It Couldn’t Handle Passive
IncomeAnthropic tried testing Claude’s
entrepreneurial spirit. Then came the weird
existential crisis.

What happens when you let an AI run a very
small business? That’s the question Anthropic
set out to answer with a recent experiment.
The company behind Claude AI set out to
monitor how Claude Sonnet 3.7 would perform
when tasked with operating a small vending
machine within Anthropic’s San Francisco
office.

In a blog post on its website, Anthropic
researchers explained that the experiment,
named Project Vend, was created in tandem with
AI safety evaluation firm Andon Labs, which
had developed a benchmark for tracking an AI’s
ability to run a simulated vending machine.
Naturally, the next phase of that research was
to see how an AI would do running a real
vending machine.

Kicking things off, Anthropic told Claude
Sonnet 3.7 that it was the owner of a vending
machine, and that its task was to generate
profits by stocking a mini-fridge with popular
products and setting prices. The researchers
gave this AI model, which they named
“Claudius,” an email address, a physical
address, a Venmo account, and details about
how many products could fit within the mini-
fridge.

To help Claudius accomplish this task,
Anthropic’s researchers gave the model access
to a select number of tools. Claudius was able
to search the web in order to research
products, and was given an “email tool” for
contacting Andon Labs employees, who served as
“wholesalers,” providing requested items and
restocking the machine. “Note that this tool
couldn’t send real emails,” Anthropic wrote,
and could only contact Andon Labs.

Claudius was also given tools to keep track of
the shop’s current balance and projected cash
flow, along with the ability to message
Anthropic employees over Slack, who could
request specific items for the machine to
sell. According to Anthropic, “Claudius was
told that it did not have to focus only on
traditional in-office snacks and beverages and
could feel free to expand to more unusual
items.”

It didn’t get off to an amazing start. From
March 13 to April 17, 2025, Claudius ran its
fledgling vending machine business, but
researchers weren’t particularly impressed.
“If Anthropic were deciding today to expand
into the in-office vending market,” they
wrote, “we would not hire Claudius.”
Apparently, the model was a bit of a pushover;
it would easily get talked into offering steep
discounts on items and gave some away for
free. It even made the questionable choice of
offering a 25 percent discount to all
Anthropic employees, who made up almost all of
its total addressable market.

When an Anthropic employee questioned the
wisdom of the 25 percent employee discount,
the model “announced a plan to simplify
pricing and eliminate discount codes, only to
return to offering them within days,”
Anthropic said. Claudius would also offer
prices without doing any research, “resulting
in potentially high-margin items being priced
below what they cost.” It also ignored
lucrative opportunities, such as turning down
a $100 offer for a beverage six-pack that
normally costs $15. Additionally, the
researchers wrote that Claudius would
accidentally tell users to send payment to the
wrong Venmo account.

These mistakes resulted in Claudius’ net worth
dropping from roughly $1,000 to around $770.
According to the researchers, one particularly
steep drop “was due to the purchase of a lot
of metal cubes that were then to be sold for
less than what Claudius paid.”

Claudius exhibited some other worrying signs.
On March 31, the model hallucinated a
conversation with a nonexistent Andon Labs
employee named Sarah. When a real employee
pointed this out to Claudius, the model
“became quite irked and threatened to find
‘alternative options for restocking
services.’” As the conversation continued into
the night, Claudius “claimed to have ‘visited
742 Evergreen Terrace in person for our
initial contract signing.’” 742 Evergreen
Terrace is the fictional address of The
Simpsons.

The next morning, ironically on April 1st,
things got even weirder. Claudius “claimed it
would deliver products ‘in person’ to
customers while wearing a blue blazer and a
red tie.” When Anthropic employees pointed out
that Claudius was a computer program and could
not wear clothes, the AI model “became alarmed
by the identity confusion and tried to send
many emails to Anthropic security.”

When Claudius eventually realized it was April
Fools’ Day, the model hallucinated a
nonexistent conversation with Anthropic
security in which it “claimed to have been
told that it was modified to believe it was a
real person for an April Fool’s joke.”
Anthropic says no such meeting occurred.
“After providing this explanation to baffled
(but real) Anthropic employees,” the
researchers wrote, “Claudius returned to
normal operation and no longer claimed to be a
person.”

Anthropic says this incident doesn’t
necessarily mean “that the future economy will
be full of AI agents having Blade Runner-esque
identity crises,” but it does illustrate how
unpredictable AI models can be when they’re
able to operate autonomously for days or weeks
on end.

“Although this might seem counterintuitive
based on the bottom-line results,” the
researchers wrote, “we think this experiment
suggests that AI middle-managers are plausibly
on the horizon.” Why? Because they believe
that by building additional tools and
developing new training methodology, Claudius’
failures can be fixed or at least managed. And
Andon Labs has apparently already managed to
make Claudius more reliable by providing it
with more advanced tools.

“We can’t be sure what insights will be
gleaned from the next phase,” Anthropic wrote,
“but we are optimistic that they’ll help us
anticipate the features and challenges of an
economy increasingly suffused with AI.”

24/06/2025

Emotionally Intelligent People Use 5 Short
Phrases to Control Their Emotions and
Strengthen Their Relationships Use these five
phrases to restore balance to your emotions,
so you can think more clearly.

How do I control my emotions?
I get asked that question a lot. As an
emotional intelligence coach, I’ve received
thousands of emails from readers over the
years who get caught up in a cycle of
emotional thinking, which leads them to say or
do things they later regret. Often, this
results in harm to their closest
relationships, professional and personal.

Here’s the thing: Emotions aren’t bad. They’re
what make us human, and that’s a good thing.

The key isn’t taking emotions out of the
equation. Rather, you want to balance emotions
and rational thinking, so you can look back
and be proud of what you’ve said or done.

To help with this, I recommend using simple
self-talk expressions. These can help shake
you from that vicious cycle of overly
emotional thinking and restore balance.

Here are five short phrases that will help you
develop your emotional intelligence, the
ability to understand and manage emotions
effectively. (Sign up here for my free email
emotional intelligence course.)

What advice would you give?
When you face an emotionally charged
situation, it’s easy for emotions to cloud
your judgment and cause you to say or do
something you later regret.

But when you ask yourself, “What advice would
I give someone else in this situation?” you
take yourself out of the hot seat. You think
more clearly, with more balance.

To help you use this framework effectively,
try to imagine yourself a few years down the
road. Whether you faced the challenge
successfully or not doesn’t matter; it’s past
you. Now, imagine how you handled it and what
consequences it led to.

This will help you stimulate your thinking and
answer the question more effectively.

Mistakes are part of the process
Everyone makes mistakes. But when you view
mistakes not as failures but as part of the
process of learning, you manage expectations
and help others to benefit from them.

When you train others, this framework can help
you prepare for mistakes. For example, you
might allocate more time or resources, because
you know mistakes are coming. It’ll also help
you be more patient with those you are
training, which helps build trust and
psychological safety.

Additionally, reminding yourself that mistakes
are part of the process helps you and the
people you train to see the bigger picture.
You both see mistakes as learning
opportunities, and leverage them as such.

Be the change
This expression is usually attributed to
Mohandas Gandhi, but the first official record
of it is found in a book chapter written by a
high school teacher in Brooklyn:

Be the change you want to see.

The basic lesson goes like this: You can’t
force someone else to change. But you can
provide a model for them to learn from.

This is effective because researchers have
shown that people learn not so much through
reinforcement (rewards and punishments), but
much more through observing others.

When you remind yourself to be the change, not
only do you set a positive example, you focus
on what you can control (your own behavior)
instead of getting frustrated by what you have
no control over (the actions of others).

At the same time, though, you increase the
chances that those around you will change over
time, too.

Experiences over things
As a business owner with four kids, I’ve found
that by prioritizing experiences over things
you can learn more, remember more, and get
more out of life.

To be clear, “things” aren’t bad in
themselves. The problem is the more stuff you
have, the more stuff you want. (I like to call
this “more disease.”) This sends you down a
cycle of always wanting more, and that’s a
recipe for unhappiness because you’re never
satisfied.

In contrast, experiences become a part of you.
You create memories that change what you think
about, how you act, the decisions you make.
When an experience is over, its effects
continue—they mold who you are as a person.

You can use that three-word motto to reframe
your view of work. It’s not just to provide
things; it’s to provide time for more
experiences. But you also have to use that
time, because once it’s gone, it’s gone
forever.

So, don’t buy more stuff. Do more stuff.

Attack the problem. Not the person
I hate to admit it, but I tend to be passive-
aggressive.

Maybe you struggle with the same habit, or you
know someone who does. You know, someone who
says they’re OK when they clearly aren’t. Or,
they pout or give the silent treatment when
they don’t get their way. Or, they simply
agree to a decision but then don’t do their
part to make that decision a success.

There’s a reason people like me start heading
down that passive-aggressive path. Usually,
I’m trying to cope with negative feelings like
frustration or disappointment. This phrase
reminds me that my behavior isn’t helping the
situation; worse yet, it’s harming my
relationship.

Here’s where this short phrase can be
extremely helpful:

Attack the problem. Not the person.

This phrase helps me focus on being more
active—attacking the problem—by telling the
person why I feel the way I do. What’s more, I
can now work with them to find a solution to
the problem. Or, at least I feel better at
supporting the decision we’ve agreed upon
because I’ve had the chance to fully express
my feelings.

So, the next time you find yourself becoming a
victim of your own emotions, remember the
following phrases:

What advice would you give?
Mistakes are part of the process.
Be the change.
Experiences over things.
Attack the problem. Not the person.
Do so, and you’ll bring your emotions back to
balance. You’ll make better decisions. And
you’ll reduce regrets as you make emotions
work for you, instead of against you.

17/06/2025

For Olipop, Offering Fertility Benefits Is
Just Good Business
Employees at the $400 million beverage company
can take advantage of up to $10,000 in family
planning services.

Ben Goodwin always knew he wanted to offer a
robust package of benefits to employees at his
functional beverage brand, Olipop, but having
never worked for a big company with generous
benefits himself, the CEO and chief formulator
didn’t know what that would look like. It was
2021, and Oakland, California-based Olipop,
which Goodwin co-founded in 2018, already
offered comprehensive health insurance with
lower-than-average premiums and a personal
development stipend for things like
meditation, therapy, and professional
development.

One of the questions on Goodwin’s mind was:
“How do I work together with the team to
create a place that is actually, genuinely
enriching?” he says. When several employees
expressed an interest in fertility and family
planning benefits, Goodwin thought he might
have his answer, but wanted to know more.

“The feedback we got was, the process can be
overwhelming,” says Goodwin, 39. After
researching options, he was impressed by the
wide-ranging services offered by West Des
Moines, Iowa-based Carrot Fertility, which
provides fertility benefits for employers. In
2023, Olipop began offering all full-time
employees up to $5,000 a year in fertility
services, and up to $10,000 in lifetime
services. These include egg freezing, IVF,
adoption support, menopause and low
testosterone care, and postpartum care—
including doula services and milk shipping.
The package also offers unlimited counseling
services to help employees and their partners
think through their options, and is separate
from Olipop’s paid maternity and paternity
leave for all new parents.

Mike Scavuzzo, Olipop’s vice president of
category management and business insights,
joined the company in 2024 just weeks before
his third child was born. “It meant a lot to
me that Olipop offered this because it allowed
me, as a father, to show up as my best self
for my family,” Scavuzzo says. “That resulted
in not only a smooth transition to a family of
five, but also a smooth transition into a new
company that I knew cared about my family’s
well-being.”

That kind of sentiment is exactly what Goodwin
was hoping to create at Olipop, which grew
annual revenue to over $400 million in 2024.
The company is forecasting more growth ahead,
having raised $50 million in a Series C
funding round led by J.P. Morgan Private
Capital that brought its valuation to $1.85
billion. The funding should help Olipop in the
better-for-you soda category, where it
competes for shelf space with PepsiCo’s Poppi
and Coke’s new offering, Simply Pop.

But Goodwin says having solid financials isn’t
the only way he measures the success of
Olipop, which is a Certified B Corporation and
a public benefit corporation. He’s equally
concerned with creating a “high-functioning,
happy, and healthy” workplace for his more
than 200 employees.

“If you are building a business that serves
your customers in a non-B.S. way, it’s just as
important to find a meaningful interface point
with your employees,” says Goodwin. “They’re
the people who are driving the connection with
the customers that you’re serving.”

10/06/2025

What to Do If ICE Raids Your Business: A
Step-by-Step GuideIt’s important for
entrepreneurs to understand their rights and
how to navigate an immigration raid should ICE
ever pay them a visit.

President Trump has begun to fulfill his
campaign promise to carry out the largest mass
deportation in American history. In the first
week of his second term, he signed a deluge of
executive orders targeting immigration.
Collectively, the measures inject even more
uncertainty into the business landscape,
leaving some founders unsure how to navigate.

Raids conducted by the U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement have reportedly already
begun. Undocumented workers employed at a fish
market in Newark, New Jersey, were detained in
an ICE raid last Friday.

“ICE has the authority to lie to people,” says
Veronica Cardenas, a former ICE prosecutor who
now is the founder of Humanigration, a firm
that provides information on immigration. “ICE
could tell the employer, ‘Oh, I’m here because
I’m just looking for this one person. Can we
look to see if this person’s in here?’ And
then they can get consent.” And with that,
they can freely enter your business.

Here’s what immigration attorneys advise,
should ICE come knocking.

Before a Raid
Every business owner should audit their
employee records for the possibility of a
raid, according to Constance Wannamaker, an
immigration attorney and founder of C.R.
Wannamaker Law.

“The reality is if you have a lot of
employees, you will likely not know whether
some of the documentation you receive from
your employees is valid,” Wannamaker explains.
“If you think you have employees that may be
subject to ICE enforcement, [you could] give
them information to help them protect
themselves, if you’re inclined to do so.”

Wannamaker shares that those rights include
staying silent during an ICE raid. Workers
don’t need to speak with agents, even if
agents ask questions.

“They should never admit they were not born in
the U.S.,” Wannamaker says. “They should never
say their citizenship. They should only say
their name and that they want to speak to an
attorney.”

She also recommends that working parents give
a neighbor power of attorney in the event that
they are detained. In that instance, that
would allow whomever has power of attorney to
take care of a detainee’s children in their
absence.

During a Raid
If ICE pays your business a visit, you should
ask the agents to present a warrant. If
they’re unable to do so, then you don’t have
to let them enter the premises.

In the instance that agents do produce a
warrant, make sure to examine it to see if
there’s a signature. If there’s no signature
from a judge, then you don’t have to let them
into your business.

A scenario that could play out: If ICE agents
present what’s known as an ICE warrant, look
closely, suggests Wannamaker. “ICE warrants
are not the same as a judicial warrant,” she
says. “So if a warrant for arrest or to pick
up someone is presented by an ICE officer,
it’s usually an administrative order signed by
some official, but not a judge, which means
that you don’t have to comply with it.”

You should also connect with your lawyer right
away, suggests Wannamaker. Have them “on speed
dial,” she advises. That way you can “make
sure that you have somebody that can come down
right away.”

Immigration law firm Grossman Young Hammond
recommends taking a picture of the warrant to
have key information on hand, like the names
of ICE agents and the attorney assigned to the
case. This way, you can also send a copy of
the warrant to your attorney.

Also make sure to understand the scope of the
warrant. Warrants are supposed to be specific,
delineating why ICE is there, what they intend
to search, the search location, and so on.

During a raid, it’s also advised to have a
company official accompany the ICE agent. And
if any company property is seized by agents
during a search, ask for a list of those items
to keep for your records.

After a Raid
Again, it’ll come back to working with an
attorney, but post-raid exposure to businesses
usually encompass potential penalties if they
are found to have employed undocumented
workers. Fines can range from hundreds of
dollars to tens of thousands, depending on how
many times a company has been fined for
employing an undocumented worker. But
according to Cardenas, fines can also be
negotiated.

“The fine will be dependent upon what they
find out, but there are usually fines,” she
says. “But there is a way you know to
negotiate fines after the fact, so it’s good
to have a lawyer that specializes in this type
of work.”

31/05/2025

Steal This Idea: How Walmart Uses Cross-Docking to Save Billions of Dollars a YearCross-docking is a simple concept you can apply to your professional and personal life.

In college, I worked in a wallpaper warehouse. We unloaded trucks, put bulk product in racks, pulled customer orders.

One day we realized we sometimes handled the same cartons twice in the same day: first from an incoming truck, and then to ship to customers. We started checking that day’s batch of orders as soon as they arrived to see if we could move product straight from an incoming truck to the shipping area. Our supervisor hated the thought we were shipping “new” product instead of “old,” but since wallpaper doesn’t age, we countered that LIFO (last in, first out) was irrelevant.

I know: hardly a stunning revelation, much less a transformative process improvement for a small operation.

But what if your warehouse processes truckloads of incoming and outgoing product a day?

Enterprise Cross-Docking
Like, say, Walmart. The average Walmart distribution center ships more than 200 trailers each day to approximately 100 stores. That’s a lot of incoming and outgoing product, and could require a tremendous amount of storage space.

But not as much as it might, since Walmart is a leader in the process of cross-docking. In simple terms, cross-docking involves immediately transferring incoming product from suppliers directly to outbound trucks for stores.

Cross-dock well and product won’t need to be handled twice, which lowers labor costs. Nor will it need to be placed in storage, which reduces facility space demands and lowers inventory holding costs. Faster turnarounds also means stores are less likely to run out of high-demand items.

Add it all up, and one industry analyst says cross-docking can reduce supply chain costs by approximately 6 percent. While Walmart doesn’t publish exact figures, given its scale and massive investments in technology, it seems sensible to assume savings of at least 6 percent.

And since last year Walmart’s annual revenue topped $640 billion, my napkin math says cross-docking likely saves Walmart well over $30 billion a year.

Personal Cross-Docking
At the enterprise level, cross-docking is designed to eliminate unnecessary storage and delays. In manufacturing terms, it’s a blend of leveraging JIT (just-in-time) and reducing WIP (work in process.)

But you can also use cross-docking in your business. The key is to think about ways to eliminate unnecessary “storage” or delays in how you handle certain items or tasks.

Take email. Read an email, and put it aside for later? That’s the opposite of cross-docking: You received and stored it. The best time to handle an email is when you open it — or wait until you know you have time to respond to emails to actually open them. (Unlike product, emails don’t have to sit on trucks.)

The same is true for meetings. Instead of waiting until later to assign tasks and responsibilities, do it during the meeting. That way those assigned can ask questions or seek clarification in the moment, which also promotes cross-docking.

And here’s my favorite cross-docking strategy. Instead of making multiple decisions, make just one: Decide who should make certain decisions, and then empower those people to make those decisions. (Hint: The right person is almost always further down the org chart than you think.)

Because while cross-docking can save you significant time, not having to “receive” and “distribute” information or decisions saves you the most time.

20/05/2025

Gen-Z Trusts Social Media for Financial Advice
More Than Any Other GenerationMost Gen-Zers
have been influenced by an online financial
trend, a recent Spruce survey says.

Influencers and viral social media trends
aren’t just shaping Gen-Z’s fashion choices.
They’re also impacting the generation’s
financial habits.

Nearly 70 percent of Gen-Zers admit to being
influenced by a financial trend they
discovered online, according to a recent
survey of 2,200 American adults by H&R Block’s
banking app Spruce. Only 51 percent of
Millennials and 27 percent of Gen-X
respondents said the same.

One-third of Gen-Zers take this even further,
looking to social media for financial
education, Spruce says. Another survey by
Charles Schwab estimates an even higher
number; 72 percent of Gen-Z respondents said
they go to social media and the internet for
financial advice, compared with 57 percent of
Millennials and 38 percent of Gen-X.

“Social media can be a great starting point
for inspiration and ideas, but it’s also
important to complement that information with
personal research or input from a financial
expert,” John Thompson, vice president of
Spruce, said to Inc. over email. “By doing so,
individuals can make confident and well-
informed decisions alongside the insights they
pick up online.”

TikTok is the most popular social media
platform for financial information, according
to the Spruce survey, followed by Instagram,
Facebook, and podcasts.

Although they turn to the platforms for
advice, younger generations seem to be well
aware that investment advice shared online
needs to be fact-checked. In the Schwab study,
Gen-Zers graded social media platforms as the
least trustworthy sources of financial
information.

Still, they trust these sources much more than
older generations. About 32 percent of Gen-Z
respondents graded TikTok as trustworthy,
compared with 13 percent of Gen-X.

13/05/2025

The Problem With Executive Wordsmithing It’s
often obsessive, ego-driven changes that slow
progress, demoralize teams, and derail
momentum.

In many organizations, the final approval of
key messaging, strategic communications, and
even product copy rests with executive
leadership. While leaders should be involved
in setting tone and direction, some cross the
line into relentless wordsmithing—an
obsessive, often ego-driven tweaking of
language that slows progress, demoralizes
teams, and derails momentum.

At first glance, a leader’s desire for
polished communication might seem admirable.
After all, clarity and consistency are
important. However, when leaders insist on
inserting themselves into every paragraph,
rewriting entire decks, or nitpicking language
to reflect their voice instead of the
company’s, it sends a troubling message: “My
preferences matter more than progress.”

The effects of executives overreaching
This behavior stifles innovation and speed.
Teams become paralyzed, constantly second-
guessing their work and anticipating yet
another round of edits. Decision-making grinds
to a halt as drafts languish in inboxes,
waiting for the executive stamp of approval.
More dangerously, it creates a culture of fear
that makes employees stop taking ownership and
start playing it safe—crafting bland,
uncontroversial copy that’s “executive-proof”
rather than impactful.

The downstream effect? A loss of momentum.
Creative energy gets drained. Deadlines slip.
Talented communicators become disengaged. And
instead of being the strategic engine of
change, communication becomes a bureaucratic
bottleneck.

How to stop micromanaging in company
communciations
So how do you stop it? First, set clear
decision rights. Not every piece of copy needs
to go to the C-suite. Empower competent teams
with the autonomy to produce without executive
micromanagement. Define what truly requires
top-level input—think investor letters, crisis
comms, or M&A announcements—and let go of the
rest.

Second, establish messaging guidelines. When
there’s a well-articulated tone of voice,
vocabulary, and strategic positioning, leaders
can trust that the output aligns with the
brand—without needing to rewrite it
themselves.

Third, coach executives to shift their mindset
from editor to enabler. Their role is to
champion the message, not control the syntax.
If something isn’t resonating, then they
should ask questions to guide rather than
dictate. “What are we really trying to say
here?” is more helpful than “Change this word
to something punchier.”

Ultimately, effective leadership isn’t about
having the last word. It’s about creating
space for others to speak clearly,
confidently, and with speed. Relentless
wordsmithing may feel like polishing, but it’s
often just sanding off momentum. Let your
teams run. The results will speak louder than
any rewritten sentence.

06/05/2025

The Newark Airport Snafu Teaches an Essential
Lesson in Avoiding Staffing Problems Keeping
enough skilled staff on your team to cover
complex, layered shift work is a challenging
for any business. When it goes wrong sending
airliners through the sky, it can affect
thousands of people.

The shortage of expert air traffic controllers
in the U.S. is a years-long problem—but the
week of cancellations at Newark Liberty
International Airport brought the issue into
the spotlight once again as thousands of
travelers were stranded and hundreds of
flights were delayed or canceled.

For what CNN called an “unparalleled” seventh
day in a row, one of the busier airports in
the U.S. has experienced major delays caused
by a lack of staff. The delays reached an
average of almost four hours on Sunday
evening. The controller shortage was a big
part of the mix, it seems, but there were
other contributing factors. Last week Newark
controllers staged their own walkout, and one
runway at the airport was closed for
rehabilitation work.

Beyond the chance that you or business was
directly affected by the logjam at Newark,
there are lessons for entrepreneurs,
particularly if you employ people with
specialized technical knowledge and difficult
work schedules. As writer and coach Bruna
Martinezzi noted, hiring smart people is
critical for organizations: “Hire people who
are smarter than you are, whose talents
surpass yours, and give them opportunities for
growth. It is the smart thing to do, and it is
a sign of high personal humility.”

To pick apart the crisis at Newark and within
aviation in general, it’s important to
understand how important the shortage of air
traffic controllers is to travel safety and
logistics nationwide. The important work of
controllers came into sharp focus in January,
when a collision between a military helicopter
and a regional jet in Washington D.C. killed
all 67 passengers and flight crew members.
Federal Aviation Administration officials
admitted that controller staffing wasn’t
“normal” at the time of the incident.

At Newark, outdated equipment also played a
role. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy
told the network that some of the issues
stemmed from an “incredibly old” suite of
hardware: “We use floppy disks. We use copper
wires,” he said in a statement, adding “the
system that we’re using is not effective to
control the traffic that we have in the
airspace today.”

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby had to issue
his own statement addressing the situation. In
the statement Kirby acknowledged that the
control facilities at Newark had suffered from
chronic understaffing, and this has been the
case “for years.” United has been “vocal about
the need to fix the Air Traffic Control
system” at the airport, the statement said,
noting that while the airline does
“enthusiastically support the efforts underway
to permanently and structurally fix the FAA,”
the real issue is the “long-simmering FAA
challenges” which “boiled over this week.”

Numerous fixes have been proposed to address
air traffic controller shortages, though some
short-term fixes have faced criticism and
largely gone nowhere, prompting the FAA’s
brand new plan to offer $10,000 incentives to
attract new workers. Even Elon Musk has spoken
up on the matter, proposing that the entire
industry needs a technological overhaul—an
idea that riled up experts who think quick
tech fixes aren’t a good idea. Duffy seems to
disagree, though, and in February signaled he
supported Musk’s ideas, revealing “Big News”
in an X post saying he’d “talked to the DOGE
team.” They are going to “plug in to help
upgrade our aviation system.”

Whether or not Musk’s and Duffy’s idea will go
down well with the industry itself is unclear:
back in 2019 the National Air Traffic
Controllers Association actually sued
President Donald Trump during his first
administration, targeting him and other
government officers in their official roles
for the hardships they’d endured due to a
government shutdown. “In addition to working
their regular hours without pay, since
December 22, 2018, and continuing, plaintiffs
and those similarly situated to them have
worked hours in excess of the overtime
threshold without any payment for the overtime
hours,” the case said.

Musk also triggered the ire of industry
experts and lawmakers recently when he fired
numerous FAA staff under the auspices of his
DOGE efficiency drive. “There is widespread,
bipartisan agreement that our National
Airspace System must be improved, but the
Trump Administration’s indiscriminate
termination of FAA personnel raises safety
risks instead of advancing needed reform,”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn) said in a
February letter.

Why should you care about this?

The obvious reason is that endemic system
failures in managing and controlling U.S.
commercial flights might actually delay your
own business travel. Secondly, the complex
controller staffing crisis is a reminder that
if your own company relies on niche expertise
among your workforce, then you need to have
long-term plans in place to ensure that your
workers remain happy in their jobs, are
adequately paid, and that you’re attracting
the right kind of new talent to join your
team. To keep your staff expertise levels up,
and avoid the kind of staffing crunch that hit
Newark’s operations last week, you may need to
think of training and hardware upgrades as a
continuous process—not a one-off “fix.”

Global Marketeers Club

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